How Do We Use Power?
Scripture Text: Acts 25
Quotes for Reflection
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality Vol 1
Power is everywhere; not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere.
Tim Keller, “Justice in the Bible”
You cannot do justice without recognizing how power has been used to exploit and abuse, but you also cannot do justice without exerting power yourself. The gospel shows us a Savior who does indeed exercise authority over us, but who uses that authority and power only to serve us, and who was willing to lose it and suffer in order to save us. Christians have intellectual and heart resources to use power in a way that does not exploit. We must never stop struggling to walk in our Savior’s steps.
Willie James Jennings, Acts: A Theological Commentary
The dream of each nation-state, each tribal-nation, and each corporation is eternality. All form their actions and their politics to enact their permanence. We know, however, that the eternity they seek is only possible in the body of Jesus. From within his body and through the Holy Spirit we live already within God’s eternal reign and within the eternal life given to the children of the living God. There and only there may a people find what no political maneuvering can achieve—life everlasting….So while some work for the welfare of the empire, we work in empires for the welfare of God’s creation. Christians can easily get this confused by forgetting that the ends of an empire are not our ends, its dream not our dream, and its circle of concern always smaller than our concerns. Our citizenship should be characterized by an urgency not born of the needs of the nation, but the witness of God’s redeeming love.
Application Questions
How do the characters in Acts 25 clarify the nature of power?
What can we learn from Paul’s relationship with power?
How is God speaking to you about your own use of power?